Protector
by Thethuthinnang
Summary: BtVS.Kingdom of Heaven. She knew that was her sword.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Kingdom of Heaven belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and Ridley Scott.

The sword was perhaps four feet long, three in the blade. The steel was still good after nine centuries, watery gray and silent, clean. The grip had been wrapped in leather and brass wire, and the hilt was plated in silver. In the pommel, a red cross shone dully in the weak light.

Buffy folded her legs up under her and curled into the wooden chair. The hall was dark and cold, the lights having been turned off and the heat redirected around midnight. She was alone in that part of the castle, with only empty, polished suits of armor, weapons and shields mounted on the wall, and covered paintings for company. It was raining again, and she was lulled by the noise of trickling water against the panes of the one huge window she'd pulled the drapes from.

She was looking at the sword.

The Watchers' Council owned a lot of stuff. A lot of it was in terms of money and property, not to mention investments, stock, and God knew what else. But over the years they'd also collected more than their fair share of artifacts, relics, weaponry, armor, books, and junk she couldn't begin to identify. The various Council heads had made it their business to bring into Watcher hands copies of things (if not the originals themselves) that would have sent the Vatican into seizures, and a whole lot of other bits and pieces that no one but uptight demonology experts would have cared to keep around. This meant that in the hundreds of years Watchers had been around with their sticky, sticky hands, they'd accumulated enough paraphernalia to make the British Museum look like a New England antique store.

Buffy had been seeing a lot of that paraphernalia lately. Giles and Dawn were having the time of their lives, sometimes descending so far into obscure historical discussions that she thought they'd stopped speaking English entirely. Being Buffy, she'd been more interested in the various sharp and pointy things they'd been taking inventory of, triggering her own case of the grabbies when Giles promised her that she could have whatever she wanted so long as it hadn't once belonged to Frederick Barbarossa or someone equally dead and historically important. Buffy had already tried to smuggle out a sword she was told had belonged to Charlemagne, and narrowly escaped getting stabbed with it when Dawn found her out.

She had seen this sword almost immediately after the three of them had first arrived. While Dawn and Giles and the caretaker in charge of this particular Watcher base were oohing and ahing over collapsing architecture, she'd taken her own tour of the place and come into this particular alcove almost by accident.

Buffy wasn't sure how to describe her reaction to seeing the sword. She'd stopped walking, stood looking at it with the strangest weight in her chest. There had been a tight, coiled feeling in her stomach, something dark and foreboding. If she had been asleep, she would have said she'd had a prophetic dream.

They had found her like that, Giles, Dawn, and the caretaker, and she'd asked them what sword this was.

"Crusader sword," said Dawn. "Maybe twelfth century."

"A style common to the First and Second Crusades," said Giles.

"It once belonged to a knight who served King Baldwin IV in Jerusalem," explained the caretaker in his accented English. "We have documented proof that it traveled from Jerusalem to France in 1187. Unfortunately, we do not know much else about it. The Council acquired it at auction in 1915, but we were unable to find any records of previous owners besides the one who sold it, the owner of a pawnshop. He could not give us any further information."

Buffy first impulse was to grab the sword and hew the legs off of anyone who tried to take it from her. She hesitated only because she couldn't understand _why_ that was her first impulse, and in the end didn't say anything at all as they all moved on. She looked back at the sword a total of seven times before they reached the door.

All through the day, she was distracted. She barely heard anything Giles or Dawn said, and the caretaker might as well have not existed. (As if to support this sentiment, Buffy had completely blanked on his name, which was French anyway and thus impossible to remember.) She wandered the castle with the others in a stupor, fighting the urge to turn and rush back to the hall with the sword. She'd never felt this way about Mr. Pointy.

That night, Buffy couldn't sleep. Dawn went out like a light and she could hear Giles snoring in the next room, but she laid in bed wide awake, thinking about the sword. She felt tense, coiled, as if she waited for something. Finally, strained to the breaking point, Buffy got up, slipped out of the room without waking Dawn, and padded her way barefoot down to the sword in only a white nightgown that she'd been unable to resist buying in Paris.

She'd been sitting there for an hour, just looking at it, a sword that once belonged to a knight in Jerusalem. She wondered if it had a name, like Tizona or Colada. She briefly considered the possibility that it had something to do with one of her previous Slayer lives, which would explain why she felt that this sword belonged to her. The Scythe felt almost the same way when she held it, but this was somehow more personal, less to do with the Slayer and more to do with the Buffy. She'd gladly shared the Scythe with Faith and the other girls, but if any of them tried to so much as lay a finger on this sword, they were going to lose a limb.

The night was getting colder. Her feet were asleep and the rain had begun to really come down. A wind blew against the windows and rattled the glass all along the hall.

Buffy wanted to touch the sword. It was a physical need that made her fingers clench and unclench spasmodically. The simple, stark lines of the blade made her hands form a grip without conscious thought. She wanted to pick it up and wield it, take a stance, arms overhead, the sword flashing bright in the air, feel the balance and weight. The need had her on her feet and had propelled her right up to the sword before she realized it.

Breathless, Buffy touched reached out in the dark and touched the cold, leather-wrapped hilt and everything _changed_.

There was no transition. Nothing was gradual—there was, and then there _wasn't_.

The air was sharp and bitterly cold. Each breath steamed white from her nose and mouth. The trees were gray-green, winter trees in their frost-streaked scales and bare, clawing branches that scratched at the leaden sky. The light was pale and weak through the snow and black woods.

A horse reared in front of her, hooves kicking at her face, and a sword glimmered as it swept down at her head.

Sheer instinct made her move. Buffy avoided the sword-stroke with a lightening turn, side-stepping the horse. She grasped the ankle where it pressed against the horse's side and pulled a large, heavy man in armor and helmet from the saddle with a wrenching one-armed throw that nearly dislocated his knee. The man slammed into the ground, and his sword fell from his hand, but too far away for her to pick up quickly. The horse, dark-coated and white-eyed with terror, bolted.

Buffy turned, adrenaline forcing that first heartbeat of paralyzing shock from her brain, and saw him.

She saw short-cropped blonde hair, an older, tired face, and a hawkish nose. His eyes, blue as a clear sky, were wide. His mouth was half-open, as if he had been crying out and then cut off. His arms, lowering slowly, bore up a sword with a brass-wired hilt and a pommel engraved with a red cross.

Somewhere, in so deep and dark a place in her heart that she barely heard anything, something cried out.

Buffy shook her head, overwhelmed. Her eyes were on the sword he was holding, _her_ sword. What was he doing with it? Disoriented, Buffy jumped to a conclusion: he was _stealing_ her sword!

She stepped forward, reaching out—and staggered as an arrow thumped into her shoulder.

Someone shouted hoarsely, but it wasn't her. Buffy tore the arrow from her flesh, her confusion focusing into pain and anger. She threw it aside, turned to face her attacker—and the man holding her sword fell to his knees.

Taken aback, Buffy hesitated. The man—his eyes were luminous and blue and fixed on her face. His expression was what she could only recognize as of rapture, full of light and passion. He was speaking now, in a low, intense whisper, and she thought she was hearing Latin. He was—was he praying? His arms were held wide, the sword pointing at the ground.

A noise made Buffy look around, and she saw that the other man, the one she had hurled from the saddle, was struggling up onto his good knee, and he was speaking Latin, too, louder and more fervently, face bloodless and eyes painfully wide and hot, as if with fever. Behind him, a black man in red and black had thrown himself onto his face, crying out in—was that Arabic?

She turned again, and there was another man kneeling, his long, braided blonde hair and bloodied sword nothing compared to the look in his eyes, and there was an armored man with a huge white cross on his chest, staring at her as his legs folded under him, and there were others, all on their knees, all speaking the same, loud Latin, all looking at her.

Except there, at the edge of it all, where a dark-haired, dark-eyed man, younger than the rest, stood very still, sword in hand.

Buffy looked again at the man holding her sword, and their eyes met.

The stone floor of the hall was achingly cold beneath her hands. Buffy gasped, panting for breath as she looked up at the sword hanging on the wall, and backed away on her hands and feet until her shoulder struck the foot of the wooden chair on the opposite side of the alcove. Then she folded her arms over her knees and sat, trembling, staring up at the sword, her eyes full of his face, her shoulder throbbing and bloody, and her feet and the hem of her white gown wet with snow and dirt.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Kingdom of Heaven belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and Ridley Scott.

Buffy didn't tell either Dawn or Giles what had happened. For some reason, she was strangely reluctant to explain that she'd hallucinated a group of armored men falling to their knees before her with Latin prayers on their lips.

What she did was look up some Latin of her own. She remembered pretty well what they'd been chanting, could still hear it sometimes like the echo of water on stone, filling her head with the voices of men used to shouts and cries and clamor. Most often it was his voice, the blue-eyed man who had been holding her sword, and his Latin sang in her ear like she imagined knights sang their hymns and prayers as they rode to war in the Holy Land.

Except it _was_ Latin they had been speaking. Latin, perfect Latin, Latin that Buffy had never known, read, heard, or even had occurred to her until she was holding one of Giles's old grammar texts in her hands. She Googled some of the phrases she remembered and came up with prayers she'd never heard or heard of in English—_Commemmoratio Angelorum_,_ Ad Sanctum Raphaelem Archangelus_, _Immaculata Mater Dei_—and couldn't possibly have come up with on her own, hallucination or not.

_In Te Credo_—that was what he, the blue-eyed man, had prayed, and the words—"I love Thee, I adore Thee; have mercy on me now and in the hour of my death, and save me"—haunted her awake and sleeping, wherever she went, seemed to float on the air at odd moments when she was alone in the castle, in the weak, gloomy light that hung over the stone ramparts and in the opening and closing of wooden doors, in the tapestries and in the arms that decorated the shields on the wall. She heard it in empty hallways, in dark corners, and in the rain that didn't stop. She heard it in her own mouth when she woke up in the pale dimness before dawn, her sister sleeping beside her, whispering even as she opened her eyes, "I believe in thee, I hope in thee."

It was proof that she hadn't hallucinated, that what had happened hadn't been by her own will, but she still didn't say anything. Dawn would freak out, Giles would worry, and then they'd never let her go anywhere near that sword alone again, not without Willow or one of their other witches or warlocks on hand and maybe not then. Buffy wasn't ready to give up her sword, because it _was_ her sword, no matter what anybody said.

A knight who served King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem—she researched the name, and learned that King Baldwin IV, also called the Leper, had been king of Jerusalem from A.D. 1174 to A.D. 1185, and that had been the year he died. Had that been when the blue-eyed man had lived? The clearing she'd been in hadn't looked anything like what she thought Israel and Lebanon should look like. Of course, she'd never been there.

She went over what had happened in her—vision? hallucination? time travel?—and couldn't figure it out. She'd thrown a man from the horse, she'd seen the blue-eyed man (and almost broken his arm off), and then someone had shot an arrow at her. She'd pulled out the arrow, thrown it aside, and—

Was that it? The arrow? Was there an arrowhead lying around—somewhere, sometime—with her blood on it? That'd be something to show Willow.

The wound had been minor, superficial by Slayer standards, and she'd hidden it under a thick sweater without any trouble. By the next morning it was healed completely, and the nightgown was stuffed behind the breastplate of a suit of armor on the third floor of the right wing. She had thought about burning it, but then figured it could be useful to have evidence later. Then a shower, and it was as if it had never happened.

Dawn and Giles distracted by their catalogs, the caretaker distracted by this pushy British and American pair who insisted on rummaging through his painstakingly kept inventories, Buffy was left alone to wander the castle in a daze the whole next day and barely got an exhausted smile from her sister as Dawn crawled into bed and went into a coma for the night. Buffy watched her sleep for thirty minutes before she finally left.

The lights were out early, the caretaker having drunk Giles under the table and then himself gone woozily to bed. Buffy went noiselessly down the stairs and down the halls, the dark nothing to her. It had been raining all day, in fact was getting worse, and lightening flashed the windows and the rooms into stark black and white. Buffy, barefoot and wearing a white T-shirt and white running pants, heard the thunder rumbling overhead as if from miles and miles away, drowned out by the increasingly loud pulsing of her heart.

The sword hadn't changed or gone anywhere. It lay there, on the wall, glimmering softly, the red cross as dull as old blood in the shadows.

Doubt made her hesitate at the last minute, her hand hanging over the hilt. This was not normal. The odds were _stacked_ that this was magical in nature and origin—and since when had magic done anything but really screw up her life? What she should do was find a phone and call Willow. She should wake up Giles and Dawn and tell them what happened. She should assume that her almost physical need to touch the sword was, in itself, dangerous and irrational, and not do it. She should definitely, most certainly not touch the sword again.

A sigh, brief and shallow, and her fingers wrapped around the—

—she sucked in a lungful of _water_.

The shock almost killed her. There hadn't been a plunge, a fall, or anything—she was just _in water_, black, freezing water, and she'd just tried to breathe it in. She choked, gagged, started to drown, arms and legs flailing—and then her head found air and her ears were assaulted by noise and wind and she gasped and gagged and managed half a mouthful of air before the stinging pain in her face drove her back under.

Now it was sheer instinct, her body, a matchless swimmer's body since age fourteen, finding its arms and legs and direction and beginning to actually swim instead of struggle. She forced her eyes open, tried to squint through the black water, and the first thing she saw was a gloved, outstretched hand and a big, mannish shape sinking slowly into the dark below.

She grabbed for it, missed, and, grabbing again, snagged the wrist. He was heavy, almost too heavy, and began to drag her down, but then she kicked powerfully with her legs and they were going up, they were rising inch by agonizing inch, until her head broke the surface and she gasped for air, sharp, stinging rain pelting her in the face and the wind scraping her skin raw as she hauled up the man whose hand she had taken.

The sound of the wind was unbearable, but she could still hear them, men, shouting, their voices almost lost in the storm and the thunder. She saw the ship by the lightening that arced into the water, saw its black shape riding the waves. Men hung over the edges, and a rope dangled in the froth. Buffy coughed up water, blew out her nose, grasped the back of her man's shirt, and struck out.

The total physical exertion of fighting the water and the wind and the storm and the dead weight of the drowner all together at once was one of the worst things she had ever fought against. Battle fatigue had nothing on this. Fighting was skill and adrenaline and timing and something like heat, like arousal, but this was sheer work. Her arms and legs felt as if they were made of lead not twenty strokes in, and the man she was dragging weighed a ton. She could hardly see for the rain and the lightening, and a couple times lost sight of the huge, white, red-crossed sail altogether.

But she had this man in her arms. If she gave up, if she faltered even a little, it wasn't just Buffy who would drown and die, her third and maybe final death. He would die with her, because she had been weak, and that was enough to bring the instinct for survival screaming to the front, and she swore and raged and swam as if she were fighting, fighting like she was the only one standing between a bunch of terrified Potentials and the Turok-Han.

When the ship loomed above her, when her hand slapped against the wooden hull, Buffy thought her heart was going to explode with relief. There was more shouting, and the rope dragged through the water and hit her in the ear. She grabbed it, got a tight grip, and then she was hauled out of the spume a huge, heaving pull at a time, and her arm, aching and numb, went taut as she took him with her by his belt.

At the rail, three different hands seized her arm, and she looked up into the eyes of a dark-haired, dark-eyed young man. It was the one who hadn't knelt, the only one who hadn't prayed that first time, back in the clearing, and now he was staring white-faced and dilated down at her. Someone struck him in the back, bringing him out of whatever daze he'd gone into, and then Buffy was dragged over the side and pitched onto the deck, her fingers slipping raw and chafed from the belt.

There was a lull in the noise, a strange hush, and Buffy realized that the only noises now were the storm and the thunder and the sea. She coughed, raised herself on her hands, and looked up.

She lay on the deck in a circle of booted feet. A horse neighed shrilly somewhere below, and thunder shook the world. Her clothes, wet through, clung to her like a second skin, and the air was salty and icy.

They were all staring at her, the men, standing silently around her in their cloaks. Their eyes were huge beneath their hoods and helmets, not speaking, not moving, standing still as stone though the ship rocked and shuddered so badly that Buffy's teeth grated. They held onto things, the mast, a box, a rope, and their fists were white-knuckled and clenched so hard they had to hurt.

Buffy turned her head, looked over her shoulder, and saw the man she'd pulled from the water.

It was him, after all, with his blonde hair and blue eyes, and she saw that one of the things that had made him so heavy was the sword hanging from his belt. He was looking at her, but this time it was not the face of someone thrown to his knees with awe. This was a quieter, much softer expression, and her heart nearly broke to see it.

At his side were the young man from earlier and then also another, the man who wore a white cross on his black shirt. They were watching her too, and the white-crossed man's lips moved as he prayed. The young man didn't pray, but he looked at her, and she saw his mouth turn and grimace with pain.

Suddenly, somewhere ahead of her, there were shouts. She turned to see what was happening and her eyes widened as the point of a sword pierced her flesh.

The stone was like ice against her skin. Buffy shivered violently as she lay on the floor of the hall, her wet hair freezing beneath her cheek. She was looking up at the sword, her eyes burning with salt, her lips blue, and blood smeared her hand. She put her fingers to the place just above her right breast, where the point had entered, and closed her eyes, going limp to feel the shallow inch the blade had cut.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Kingdom of Heaven belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and Ridley Scott.

Buffy stayed in the tub until the water was barely lukewarm, and then she stood at the mirror, skin slightly steaming, examining the shallow wound in her upper pectoral.

The bleeding was minimal, and the injury itself was hardly more than a scratch. She'd gotten worse from Post-it notes.

The arrow had been an accident. She'd seen the man who had shot it, his face bone-white, his bow falling from his nerveless fingers, before being distracted by the blue-eyed man falling to his knees. He hadn't meant to shoot her, she was sure, and considering the method of her appearance, she'd decided not to blame him.

The man on the ship had been another thing altogether. Buffy remembered the glimpse she had gotten of his face at the other end of the sword, the whites of his eyes huge and eerie in the dark-light of the storm, the way his mouth had contorted as he screamed and screamed. The expression on his face had shocked her more than the sword cutting into her flesh had, overwhelming her in its terror and panic and sheer _crazy_. She had seen insanity before (Drusilla _alone_!), but that...

Buffy remembered the crosses. The ship's sail had had a large cross on it, red against the white, and the man in the helmet had worn a cross on his noseguard and on his shirt. There was a cross in the pommel of her sword, red as blood.

_Crusaders_, she thought, and didn't know how she felt about that. The concept was a romantic one—Crusaders, knights traveling to the Holy Land to fight for chivalry and God—but that was only as long as you ignored the massacres, the diseases, the violence, the slavery, the religious fanaticism, and that the Saracens were actual people. She hadn't really studied European history at any point (unless you counted hanging out with Giles as studying European history, which she _totally _did), but from what she remembered of the parts of school she'd been there for, Crusaders hadn't been much better than murdering psychopaths who prayed a lot. And hadn't they been dirty? _Really_ dirty, like pox-ridden. She made a mental note to look that up later. Wasn't pox like an STD? Gross.

Buffy found it difficult to reconcile what she knew about Crusaders and her blue-eyed man. He didn't _look_ like the type to be out slaughtering infants, raping women, and torching mosques. Then again, a lot of vampires looked like completely normal people until they bit you.

Buffy had established that she wasn't hallucinating. You couldn't hallucinate something you didn't know and had never known. She was also operating under the assumption that she wasn't, as Dawn—who had been spending way too much time with Spike and now with Giles, apparently—would put it, barking. What did that leave? Visions? Except she had seen him react to her, had seen her effect on the people who saw her. Time travel? She supposed that was the most possible, if magic was the explanation for what was going on. What else could it be?

Why was she drawn to the sword, to him? What was the connection? She knew this was the time to tell someone. She had to go to Giles, to Dawn, had to explain what was happening and maybe get the sword to Willow. They could help her figure out what was happening, could find whatever it was that bound her to the sword and kept her coming back. They could sever it, make sure it didn't happen again.

Tying the white silk robe closed, Buffy hesitated at the foot of the bed. She could hear Giles snoring heavily in the other room, like he always did when he went to sleep after some stiff drinking. Dawn's soft breaths were small, fluttering noises, coos in the dark. They'd been having such a good time, two history buffs up to their necks in their favorite subject. Buffy knew they didn't mean to neglect her, but it was so awkward when all three tried to talk. Things were so much easier when she just let the two of them go off and do their thing while she wandered around in a daze by herself, which she knew wasn't healthy or helpful, but what was she supposed to say to them? That everything was all right? That she was over it? That she was ready to try and make up and be a family again when in her heart she still felt nothing but that empty, wary distance? That she was fine, she was moving on, when inside she was still broken, crying out at the pain of Spike's death?

She saw the face of her blue-eyed man, lying pale and near-drowned on the deck in the arms of his two companions.

Was he all right? He'd been wearing leather and wool, and the water had been so cold. The ship had been so small, such a flimsy wooden raft compared to the steel and mass and mechanics she was used to. The storm had been black and furious, the waves taller than the ship's mast, and the rain driving and thick when she'd gone.

Wasn't it really easy to get sick back then? They didn't have antibiotics in the Middle Ages. What if the water had gotten into his lungs? What if he lay fevered and dying right now? What if the ship had broken up under the wind and the pounding water?

What if he died without ever telling her his name?

Buffy caught herself at the door, snatched her hand off the knob. She didn't know why she was so upset. The rain pattered against the glass windows of her bedroom as she walked the length of it, pacing back and forth, the hem of her robe swishing against her bare legs.

There was no reason for her to be like this. There was no reason for the panic welling up inside of her, for her lungs to be struggling for air. She didn't know him! She didn't know anything about him, except that he had once owned a particular sword.

"This is crazy," she whispered angrily to the window. "I don't know him! I don't care! Someone is messing with me! And I am _not_ talking to myself!"

That had to be it. This was magic. Someone was working magic against her, was making her keep from telling anyone what was happening and go back again and again against her own judgment. This was dangerous. She _had_ to tell Giles.

Buffy was running down the hall that led to the stairs. She didn't remember opening the door or making the decision to leave her room, but now she was at the stairs, taking the steps five at a time. Her feet struck the ground floor with a shudder at the impact of cold, numbing stone against her skin, and then she was running down the corridor that would bring her to the alcove of the sword, passing through the hall like a sigh.

She had to get to the sword. She _knew_ it.

He needed her.

She hesitated only once, as she passed a collection of Toledo swords arranged on the wall. She snatched the one that had caught her eye, a smaller sword with a wrought Spanish hilt of brass and gold and a blade that shimmered like light on water. It fit her hand as if it had been made for her, and seemed to whisper through the air as she ran.

The floor of the alcove was still wet, and the smell of salt lingered on the stone. Buffy ignored it, splashed straight through the film of water up to the sword and, _salva me_ like a memory in her ears, grasped the hilt.

Bright, hot light washed over her skin. Buffy hesitated, her eyes adjusting to the abrupt glare in less time than it took for her heart to beat twice, and then a curved blade came straight at her eye.

She barely managed to parry, taking the thrust at an awkward angle and forcing it aside, locking guards. The momentum threw her back and she tried to compensate with a backward step only to come up against something big and broad that stopped her and held her up in a jangle of metal and cloth and a guttural tongue that she could tell was swearing—she'd been pressed up against someone's back.

Adrenaline flooded her system and Buffy began to register things. Her bare feet were digging into stone and sand, baked warm against her soles. The man bearing down on her was tall, dark-skinned and dark-eyed, black-bearded, the whites of his eyes showing all around as he stared at her, and he wore ragged, dull robes beneath which she saw a coat of mail, rank with oil and ash. The sword he held was small, and he gripped it awkwardly in his fists as if he had been in the act of ramming it point-first. His elbows were pressing against her forearm.

Buffy was crushed between this man and whoever was behind her. Overhead, light streamed down in folds through the clouds, as if the sky had been draped with both dark and shining cloths, but she could see it only around the edges of the man's turbaned head. The smell of dry heat, sweat, and garbage made her choke. At her back and against her legs, she felt the scratch of metal, the shape of another, bigger man, her hip pressed back against his leg.

All of these things passed through her mind in less time than a single heartbeat, and then, as the pressure began to lift from her blade, as the robed man's mouth began to open, Buffy retaliated, thrusting his sword back with hers, and knocked him to the ground.

Behind her, someone cried _"Nomine Dei!"_

Buffy turned, sword in hand.

The blue-eyed man stood in front of her.

His hand was on his sword, as if he was about to draw it. He wore a leather cap and a metal coif, and a long white and red shirt, with crosses in red on the white and in white on the red. He looked pale, thinner in the face than she remembered, but he was alive and looking at her, his blue eyes swallowing her whole. He didn't even seem surprised to see her—his face softened, the color of his eyes darkening, and then he smiled, a small, quiet, somehow _shy_ smile that made him look almost boyish.

For one, glorious moment, Buffy's heart grew light and full, kind of warm and fuzzy, and she smiled to see him smile, smiled like she hadn't since that one, glorious moment when she'd stood at the edge of the hole in the ground that had been the Mouth of Hell, and it was just the two of them, looking at each other, and she thought he might reach out and touch her face.

Buffy moved before she realized she was moving—and snatched the bolt out of the air barely an inch away from his throat. Even as his expression changed, as his brain interpreted what had happened and his eyes widened at how close to death he had come, Buffy was whirling, her ears tuned to the hum of quarrels, her Toledo sword angled for battle.

It was hard to understand what she was seeing. The street was broad, the buildings on either side of whitish stone and awnings. The ground was thick with sand, and littered with debris she didn't recognize except as metal and clay and bits of cloth. People were shouting and scattering, people dressed in turbans and headcloths and long robes in brown shades. Men carrying wooden crosses on poles huddled against a wall there, staring at her with white faces, and there a woman stood with a baby in her arms, trembling as she fell jerkily to her knees. There were so many people—and the man she had knocked down, the man with the curved sword, was vanishing into a crowd of sack-bearing women.

She was standing next to a fountain, in the center of the street—no, a square, she saw, with streets leading off in four different directions. Awnings of red cloth billowed over her head. A white horse she had seen before was stomping its hoof at a water trough, made nervous by the commotion, and a man—blonde and braided, an axe and a sword on his belt—was holding its reins in loose fingers, his blue eyes fixed on her.

Someone moved behind her—the blue-eyed man?—and then a bee's drone filled her ears. Buffy pivoted on a heel, sliced at the air—and a second bolt clattered against the blue-eyed man's mail in two pieces, bouncing harmlessly off.

There—she saw the crossbowman, a black shape on a roof two buildings over, the second tallest building facing the square. She could see him reloading, the head of a third quarrel glinting in the light, and Buffy brought her arm back, took aim—_not too hard, not too fast, exactly there_—and threw her Spanish sword.

It flashed in the light, an impossible throw, arcing and wheeling in the air in almost slow motion, and it struck the crossbow with a noise of splintering wood, and the black-robed man cried out as he dropped his weapon, embedded with Toledo steel.

There were shouts, and hands lifted to point at the man on the roof, but Buffy turned to find the blue-eyed man looking at her, and behind him were the others. There was the man in his black shirt, white cross emblazoned on his chest, still sitting on top of a horse, and rushing up to the blue-eyed man's side was the dark-haired young man, only now his eyes were haunted and hollowed, as if he was the one who had been sick, and his skin was sunburned. Men in red and white shirts jostled behind him, staring all the while at her, and the black man in his red cloth and black armor was holding a lowered sword at his side.

So many faces, but her eyes were all for the blue-eyed man. He had taken his hand off of the hilt of his sword—of _her_ sword—and was reaching out to her, was not looking at her face. It didn't even occur to her to be alarmed—she simply looked at him, drinking in the sight of him, as he carefully, gently, with excruciating attention, lifted the silver cross on its chain from her skin.

Buffy fell back against the cold stone of the wall, almost knocking a suit of armor off its stand. The heat of sun and sand evaporated into nothing, and she shivered violently as she collapsed into a chair, the hall unnervingly silent and dark after the light and noise of the square.

The rain was stopping. Buffy could still hear the wind, but it was weaker and rattled fewer of the windows. The sand and dust on her feet wet in the puddle on the floor, turned to sludge. She rubbed them together, reminded of walking in the surf on long, sun-hot beaches.

Buffy closed her eyes, felt the tension drain from her shoulders.

He was safe.

Then she jerked, straightening up as if there'd been a gunshot. Mouth suddenly dry, she groped at her neck and chest even as she looked frantically around the floor, standing up to look under the chair.

There was nothing. Buffy's heart sank.

The Toledo sword was gone.

And so was her cross.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Kingdom of Heaven belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and Ridley Scott.

Note: I apologize in advance for my mangled French and Latin. If you have any corrections, _please_ tell me.

"Buffy?"

Buffy turned, only just coming off the adrenaline high. Dawn was standing at the edge of the alcove, where it met the hall. A large flashlight in one hand, she was still in pajamas, though she wore boots and a hideous plaid jacket over it all. Her hair was tousled and her face swollen with sleep, and Buffy felt a sudden, unexpected surge of affection.

"What are you doing?" asked Dawn. "It's the middle of the night—you're not wearing shoes! Or clothes! Oh my God, Buffy, are you _trying_ to catch pneumonia? I don't want to hear it about being the Slayer! If you get sick, _I'll_ get sick, and maybe you can go slaying in hospitals while running a fever of like three hundred degrees, but the common cold kicks _my_ ass, so—"

_"Dawn,"_ interrupted Buffy, holding up her hands. "I'm fine. It's nothing. I'm sorry you had to get up. Let's—"

Everything seemed to just...well..._tilt. _Buffy swayed, only just keeping her balance, and her vision swam for several, gut-wrenching seconds. When she opened her eyes again she was leaning heavily on the chair, her knees shaking, and Dawn's face was white.

"Buffy?" whispered Dawn. "Buffy, what's wrong? What happened?"

Buffy opened her mouth but could say nothing. Her eyes went to the sword on the wall, her sword. She heard the brush of cloth and the hard soles of boots on the floor, and then the slosh of disturbed water.

"What is this?" cried Dawn's voice. "Do you smell that? Is this saltwater? Buffy—"

Buffy looked up, tried to focus on Dawn's face—

—and saw the straight, sharp edge of a blade descending.

Instinct raised its head and her muscles tensed, every part of her body leaping to get out of the way. _But_—she felt the shape behind her, the presence she was coming to be able to recognize without seeing, smelled the oil and leather, the sweat and wine, heard the sudden hiss of his inhalation, and she knew he was there, behind her, and the sword was coming for _him_.

Ignoring her gut reaction, moving slower for fighting her own impulse, Buffy reached up and clapped her hands together over the blade, stopping it a hairsbreadth away from cleaving her skull open. A glance back showed a broad, armored shoulder, and the edge of the sword just grazing the links of the mail that covered it.

There was a sense of time slowing. She saw what she could from such a bad angle—the blue-eyed man's left shoulder and arm, the feet, legs, and belted waist of the man hacking at her, and the pale white stone of the floor they stood on. She had an impression of mosaics and pillars, and an open sky overhead, and the scent of woodsmoke filled the air.

There were others. She felt each presence as if it were a weight against her skin, felt the blue-eyed man and several others at her back, heard the slow slither of swords unsheathing, cloaks unfurling. She saw another man behind the one in front of her, saw his feet, and heard rapid pulses of at least four more.

Instantaneously, she laid out the situation as she recognized it: at least six attackers, bearing swords, the blue-eyed man behind her, and a closed space like a courtyard.

Buffy wrenched her grip sideways, pulling the sword out of the assailant's grasp entirely, and time resumed.

He kept coming, unable to check his momentum, and she put her foot in his stomach, stopping him with a painful gasp. She pushed off and he pitched back onto the floor, falling with a thump of metal against stone, and she saw that he wore a long, white shirt with a huge red cross.

Buffy flipped the sword she'd taken from him, raised it two-handed even as she turned to face the next attacker—and jarred to a halt as a hand closed on her right arm.

The blue-eyed man was looking down at her. Buffy hesitated—he did not look like a man being ambushed. She realized it was suddenly very quiet, and she turned to see everyone, everywhere, looking at her.

The man she had kicked down was sitting up. He wore no helmet, and she could see his wide, disbelieving eyes, the open mouth. Behind him were five other men dressed exactly like him, red crosses deep and dark in the subdued light of the courtyard, except their swords were lowering, they were straightening up, not a one of them looked as if he intended to go on attacking.

Around the courtyard stood other people, these dressed very differently—in colors and styles she had no way of identifying except as old. There were women—in bright-colored clothes and headdresses, and older men in robes, and what looked like priests in vestments. Guards dressed in steel and blue stood at intervals against pillars, and they were staring, too, their weapons sheathed and spears at rest.

A man in black, with a white patch on the left side of his chest on which laid a golden cross, stood behind the blue-eyed man. A long scar went down the right side of his face, at the corner of his eye, and he was dark-haired and dark-bearded. On his face was an expression of wonder that was almost painful, and she stared to see the tears in his eyes.

The blue-eyed man reached over and took the sword from her hands. Buffy didn't resist, and she realized he was talking to her, his voice low and quiet—not in Latin. Was that French? What did they speak, back then—back now?—when Crusaders lived?

Someone moved at his side, and she saw that it was the young man of the dark hair and dark eyes, and he had changed, too. They were both wearing the red and white shirts, and red cloaks on top, and that was when she saw that, though they didn't look very much alike, there was something in the way they stood, in the way they held themselves, that put in her mind that they were related—brothers, maybe, but (from the lines in her blue-eyed man's face and his general air) more like father and son.

Everyone else was there, the black shirt with the white cross, the yellow braids, the black man, a tall, shaved red and white shirt—didn't they ever go anywhere alone? Not that he _should_, from what she'd seen. Were they his friends? His servants? His guards?

He was still talking, his hand on her arm, his voice the only sound in the whole courtyard, everyone standing unnaturally still, and that was when she saw the silver gleam at his throat.

It was her cross. He was _wearing her cross_. Buffy was speechless. First he stole her sword, then he stole her cross? The—the _nerve_...!

She was going to reach up, to take back her cross—and there was a hard, painful, bone-aching, skin-tearing, teeth-shattering, all-encompassing _wrench_.

"Buffy! Oh my God, Buffy, pleasepleaseplease get up—"

Someone was shaking her by the arm, but this wasn't the large, callused hand of a man—these were Dawn's hands, small and frail, though you couldn't tell _that_ by the grip Dawn had on her arm now.

Buffy realized she was flat on her back, on the stone floor, in the dark, and that she couldn't breathe. She tried to sit up, or move, or even wiggle her big toe, but her eyes simply stared up at the ceiling and her limp right hand was splashing the puddle as Dawn shook her, the beam of the flashlight arcing crazily back and forth.

She tasted blood, and her lip throbbed. When had she bitten her lip?

_"Giles!"_ Dawn was screaming. _"Giles, Giles, help me, oh, God, Buffy—"_

It's all right, Buffy wanted to tell her, it's all right, I'm fine, give me a minute. You won't believe what's been going on.

But her mouth wouldn't open and her throat wouldn't work and there was a pulling sensation in her chest, as if her heart was straining to get out, as if something had a hold of it and was pulling, pulling _hard_—

—and she struck out, knocked the sword from a black-gloved hand and, seizing him by the front of his shirt, threw Attacker #307 to the ground with enough force to rattle his teeth.

_"Would you please stop getting into trouble!"_ was what she was going to shout, but, as she turned, looking for the blue-eyed man, she looked full into a face of silver metal and stopped, the words stuck in her throat.

He was standing in front of a chair, not well; he leaned unsteadily as she watched. He was draped in white, wool and silk swathing him from head to foot except for the silver mask he wore, but she could smell what she couldn't see—blood, pus, and rotting flesh.

The blue-eyed man was there, and a bunch of other people, but all she could see was this one man, standing in front her through sheer self-control alone. She felt his pain like heat against her face, the agony he was in just to be standing. She could see his eyes through his mask, luminous and blue and defiant. She heard him speak, heard his voice, and he was whispering to her, _"In te credo, in te spero, te amo, te adoro!"_

He fell to his knees, and couldn't help crying out. The sound seemed to echo, seemed to toll like a bell in her ears, and Buffy saw him coming closer though he didn't move, and only comprehended that it was she who was moving, she who was walking slowly to where he hunched, bent with suffering, when she felt the cool stone below her knee and realized that she was next to him, was laying her hand gently on his shoulder.

Her lip throbbed. The light was pale and gray, but the whole world was his blue eyes. Blue eyes. Where was her blue-eyed man? Was he behind her somewhere? Who had attacked him this time? Dawn was probably really worried...

Metal pressed coolly against her fingertips and she saw that she was taking the mask from his face, that his wrapped hands came up as if he would stop her but ended up just hanging there, as if he couldn't bear to touch her. The silver face slipped off easily, and then there was a really awful smell of putrefaction—

She heard someone scream, heard people cry out in horror, men swearing, but all she could see was his face, his spoiled, decimated face. Some part of her wanted to flinch back, was repulsed beyond speech, as physically repelled as she was by few things, but there were tears in his eyes, tears that streaked the deformed flesh and pus, and that kept her standing where she was.

Buffy felt pity well in her as she'd never felt before, a helpless pity that made her ache. She knew who this was, had read about him that very day. She knew what was killing him.

There was nothing she could do.

Buffy hated feeling helpless. She hated it as she hated nothing else, even before what had happened with Glory. But there was nothing here that she could do. She couldn't fight this, kill this, slay this. She couldn't beat it and save him. There was no sword to turn aside, no bolt to catch in midair, no water to drag him from.

There was nothing she could do.

The feeling overwhelmed her. It didn't occur to her that anything was strange, or that she was overreacting to someone she didn't even know. Tears filled her eyes and spilled over, and she couldn't decide if they were tears of anger or grief.

He groaned, a despairing groan that only she could hear, and he whispered through his wasted lips, _"Angele Dei."_

Buffy didn't know what made her do it. If she'd had even a second to consider it, to think about it, she didn't think she would have, no matter how she felt, no matter that she knew it wasn't contagious. It just wasn't her.

But the urge came out of nowhere, filled her body with a light like fire, and before she even understood what it was she was doing, she had kissed him.

Softly, the silver face in one hand, the other cupping his cheek, she pressed her bloodied lip to his.

The floor went out from under her. The silver mask clattered onto the floor, and Buffy raised herself on her elbows, dazed. He had pushed her—he had pushed her so hard she'd fallen down the steps of the raised dais and was lying on the floor, looking up at him.

The blue-eyed man stood as if he was reaching out, as if he was about to come forward, and his mouth was half-open in the strangled cry she had just heard—but now he was only staring, his eyes fixed on the man in white. His son, the dark-haired young man, his mouth was open, he was staring, and the man in black with a scar over his eye had fallen to his knees, his lips moving in noiseless prayer.

The man in white staggered back, against his chair, the scraping sound it made as he jostled it the loudest thing in the world. His hands were pressed to his face and he groped at his forehead, his nose, his mouth.

A woman fell to her knees, a pale woman with narrow eyes rimmed with black, black that smeared her face as she wept. Beside her a tall, hawk-nosed man with a high forehead was gaping, his face bloodless and still.

The man, the leper, now cried out, but his voice was whole and deep, the voice of a man shouting in disbelief, nothing left of the hoarse whisper. He tore at the wool and silk that wrapped him, pulled them to pieces as he struggled out of them, and Buffy saw thick, brown hair, a straight, sharp nose, a lean shoulder, the skin unmarred and unblemished.

_"Le roi," _someone cried._ "Le roi!"_

He stripped the last white cloth from his head and then everyone could see him, his face, thin and pale—but _whole_.

The king stood, gaunt and half-naked, and looked down at her.

_"Ange,"_ he said, breathless and full of light. _"Ange."_

_"Miraculum,"_ someone said—the blonde man in the black coat with a white cross. _"Miraculum!"_

Buffy moved slowly, trying to stand, but her legs felt like rubber. The blue-eyed man was on his knees again, and even his son had finally given in, and their Latin was a roar in her ears, a storm at sea. Buffy's stomach turned, she felt as if she was going to pass out, and then hands caught her by the arms.

It was the king. He was on his knees next to her, a reversal of positions, and she saw that he was wiry but strong, his sinews and muscles like iron. His eyes were a deeper, darker blue than her blue-eyed man's.

_"Ma ange," _he breathed. _"Ma ange gardien."_

The shift came then, the wrench that meant she was moving again, moving through—_something_—except this time she felt both their hands at the same time, the king's hands and her sister's hands, and they were both clutching at her by her arms, talking to her, and their words flowed over and into each other, _"Dieu me vous a donne"_ and _"Please, wake up!"_

She was there, in both places, all at once—she was lying on the stone floor of the castle, Dawn and Giles leaning over her, their faces white in the dark, and she was on the white floor of the courtyard, the king holding her in his arms, and she couldn't move, she couldn't breathe, there was nothing she could do but open her mouth and scream without a sound at that splitting, tearing pain in her hair and flesh and skin and bones—

Except his grip was so strong, his grip was merciless, and she felt their fingers slipping away, Dawn's and Giles's frantic, desperate hands, groping the air and the wet stone for her arms and hands—

_Dawn, _she wanted to cry, but she was falling away, they were losing her, and then she fell and fell and fell and she was huddled, shaking, in his arms, he was cradling her like a child, he was whispering to her, _God gave you to me,_ and then she felt the stone and the white cloth against her skin, felt his lips against her forehead, and then she pushed him away and opened her mouth and blood, bright and red, spilled in a torrent from her lips.

There were shouts, an alarm, and the king was shouting _"Medecin!" _and someone was going on one knee beside them. Buffy's head lolled on her neck and she saw through half-lidded eyes that it was her blue-eyed man, he was there, he was holding her hand, and then everything went cool and dark and quiet.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Kingdom of Heaven belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and Ridley Scott.

It was too hot.

She was lying on something soft. It was something thick and yielding, that cushioned her head and body, sinking pliant beneath her weight, like a pile of feathers. The thing that covered her, a loose, thin sheet that bundled in places and stretched over her legs and feet, wrapping her body like a shroud, was damp and smelled of sweat. A light was flickering somewhere near her, a hot, wavering light that made the skin of her eyelids glow in sparks of red and orange. The hair had been pulled back from her face, her lips tasted like salt, the air was a stifling boil, and there was something cold and metal against her arm.

Every part of her body ached. Nausea made her throat swell, the bile rise in her mouth. Then it came again, that jagged, biting pain in her arm that made her turn her head and groan, made her eyes struggle open despite the stupor.

A man stood over her, framed by gold cloth and white stone. His head was bald except for a short, dark fringe of hair, and he wore a black robe. A long nose and wide, zealot's eyes were pointed down, at something he was doing.

With one hand, he held the wrist of her left arm, pressing it into the bed. In the other, he held a long, glittering knife, the tip of which penetrated the flesh at the joint where the big vein throbbed. Blood welled and coursed down her arm, bright and red, into a silver bowl sitting at her side.

The man's eyes came up, and widened, the corners of the eyelids stretched, when they met hers.

_"Ange,"_ he whispered, and his fingers dug into her wrist.

His nose broke with a loud crack beneath her open palm. The knife fell, slid noiselessly against the sheet and then to the floor, clattering. The man cried out, hands going to his face, and she saw that his hands and the sleeves of his robe were stained and wet, the red soaking the black cloth and glistening in the light. He staggered back, and then she'd ripped free of the sheet that wound about her and was standing, trembling with heat and noise and effort, in the middle of a large, thickly blanketed mattress. The sheet stuck to her legs and back.

Her arms were hot and drenched with blood.

Someone shouted. The man she'd hit was wailing shrilly. Something heavy overturned, and then they were crowded around the bed, people, men, in robes and long shirts, long hair and beards or bald heads everywhere. Hands reached out, open, to her, trying to take her hand, her arm, and voices filled her ears, the voices of men pleading, exhorting, shouting. The bowl of her blood was knocked to the floor, and the hems of robes and the points of shoes scattered as it splashed.

Everything was light and heat and shouting. Her head swam, and she almost fell—the men cried out in something like alarm, like terror, as she swayed.

She saw a woman, a nun—because what else could that black habit and wooden cross possibly mean—struggling at the edge of the crowd, pleading with the people around her, and behind the nun was a door.

Buffy _moved_.

The men crowding the bed collapsed back, either struck to the floor or pushed. The nun gasped, shrieked, and then Buffy was past her and at the door, flinging it open, but more faces crowded there, faces with wide eyes and open mouths, and Buffy left it ajar as she ran for a window in the wall between the door and the bed. Shouts and screams erupted as she forced the shutters, a cool draft in her face. The gilded wood came apart like tissue in her hands, and then there was a black sky filled with stars, a wind that smelled of sand and fading heat.

There was no ledge, only a sheer drop. Her hands scraped over the surface of the stone, finding handholds and cracks and gaps in the rock, and she pulled herself out of the room. For a long moment, she hung by her nails, feet dangling in empty space, but then her toes found crevices in the stone, her fingers had a beat to scramble along the wall looking for leverage, and then she was climbing, she was going up the surface of the stone, and heads craned out of the window below to stare at her going.

Panic filled her mind, crowded out all other thought. She didn't know where she was, she didn't know what was going on; she hadn't thought beyond escaping that room, those hands. She tried to look around, to see what she was climbing, but it was as if she had tunnel vision and all her eyes would take in was the next crack in the stone, the next smallest breach where her fingers might be able to find support.

It was dark. She heard shouting, from below and farther down. A wind dragged at her hair, at her clothes, and that was when she realized what she was wearing: a white shirt, cotton and sleeveless, that came to her knees and made it harder for her to climb. The sweat dried on her skin and then every wind was bitingly cold.

Drops of hot blood splattered into her face, her eyes—her own blood. Her skin was hot and stretched, despite the wind or the cold night, and she felt dizziness begin to get a hold of her. Her fingers slipped and she nearly fell, saving herself only by grabbing onto the edge of another opening in the stone.

It was a window. She broke the shutters, tearing them out of her way, not caring how or where they fell, sick to her stomach. Groaning with exertion, Buffy pulled herself halfway in, and then tumbled the rest of the way.

Here it was dark. The only light was the light of the stars that came through the opened window, and she lay shivering violently on the cold, hard floor. Twice, she lost consciousness, only to regain it barely a second later. The smell of her blood was what forced her up, onto her feet.

Buffy stood in a long, empty hall, dark and deserted. From somewhere below, she heard shouting, screaming, the rush and commotion of people. Voices echoed hollowly in all directions, throwing off the precision of her hearing.

_Where? Where? Where?_

She remembered—things. Confused, jumbled images, of her blue-eyed man, the sword at his hip, and then _another_ blue-eyed man, half-naked, whole-fleshed, and eyes bright with rapture—

More noise, coming closer, and Buffy remembered the knife against her arm. She had to get away. She had to find a safe place, she couldn't think through all the pain, the sickness, the blood—she had to find someplace, she had to find _safety_—

Her head came up. A stillness swept through her body, her arms and legs.

There, on the air, faint but still there, still recent—

That smell...

She _knew_ that smell.

Buffy couldn't remember how she'd found the door. When she tried, all she saw in her head was the stone against her feet, the corners of the walls in the dark, and the smell, always the smell, that pulled her on. A half-panicked, half-mad, desperate rush, flitting from dark to dark and avoiding all light, all noise, and flinching with her entire body when she finally came into the dim yellow torchlight. Her arms smeared with blood, the front of her shirt soaked red, her bare feet growing slippery and her skin white with the loss.

And then the door, finally, at last, the door.

She had to force it. The lock was large and uncomplicated, but she couldn't concentrate long enough to work it. The metal gave easily enough, with a groan of stressed iron, and then she staggered, fainting, nearly unconscious, into his room.

It was his. She knew it. There was his cloak, hanging from a peg, and there was the shirt he had been wearing the first time she had saved him. There was the bed he slept in, she knew because his smell was all over it, the smell of his hair, his body, and that pallet was what she supposed his son slept on—

The floor was flat, numbing stone, raw against her burning cheek. Buffy tried to remember how she'd gotten on the floor, but her eyes hurt at the way everything kept fading in and out, and why was the front of her shirt wet? She tried to bring up a hand, tried to grasp the edge of the bed in order to stand up, but all she ended up doing was closing her eyes.

When she opened them next, her back was against the wall. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, she'd wrapped her arms around them, and she realized she couldn't feel her hands or her feet. What was that on the floor? It was so slick and red...had someone spilled something?

Where was her blue-eyed man? Probably getting into trouble somewhere, and she wasn't going to be there to get him out of it because to do that she'd have to stand up, and that was just not in any of her short-term plans. At least the pain was going away...at least she could sleep now...

Buffy felt it, that core of rot and sickness that was boiling inside of her somewhere, and she knew how it had gotten there, she just couldn't... remember..._why_...

Why...?

Dawn was going to be so worried. She should have...left a note, or something. Except now she wasn't going to be able to find anything but parchment and quill. At least she didn't have to worry about ink, not with all this blood lying around.

Her skin was going to incinerate. She felt so hot, her mouth was so dry...

Distantly, from somewhere far, far away, she felt the light creeping over the floor, the pale glow of the window cool and delicious against her face. She heard the footsteps, the voices, long before they came to the door, and she heard it when they stopped, when everything went silent, as if something had cut them off mid-breath.

A part of her heard it when the door slammed open, when maybe half-a-dozen or so bodies came hurtling in. She heard it when they stopped, when all the air was sucked out of the room in one, gasping _"Jesu!" _She heard it when one voice, a man's, cried out, in such heart-breaking agony that she vaguely wondered who'd just been stabbed where.

Why wouldn't her eyes open?

When he touched her, she knew it was him.

Buffy could have cried with relief. He was there, he was there. He was taking her in his arms, he was lifting her up, and it hurt more than she'd thought possible for anything to hurt, but it was worth it because he was there and he had her and now she was safe.

He was holding her. He was whispering to her. _"In te credo,"_ he whispered, and she felt his lips on her forehead, felt the chill metal of her cross around his neck press to her eyelid. He was holding her, and he was praying into her hair, and she could have cried because everything was like it was supposed to be and everything was going to be all right.

And it was OK to let go.


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Kingdom of Heaven belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and Ridley Scott.

_My lord cries out. She is still in his arms, as still and white as death. Blood smears her arms and legs._

_There is blood on the wall, on the floor. There is blood where she pushed the door, the mark of her small hand on the wood. There is where she fell, where blood spattered in an arc across the flagstones. There is where she crawled, with her hands, to the wall._

_There is shouting from behind, from below. The halls are filled with servants, priests, and nuns, knights and soldiers, all shouting that the angel has fled. They shout, they make such noise, and she lies here bleeding, dying, in my lord's arms._

_Bar the door, says my lord. He sits on the stone, the angel cradled in his lap._

_My lord, I say, if they should force—_

_Then kill them as they come, he roars, and never before this moment have I heard him roar except in battle. The sound of his voice is like a blow to my face. His son's eyes widen._

_Odo, says my lord, and Odo, unswerving Odo, takes out his sword and goes to the door._

_My lord bows his head. If he is weeping, I cannot tell it. The Hospitaller kneels at his side, the Moor bending over him._

_Sunlight glows through the window and warms the room. Men are shouting, and there is a streak of German curses. They have seen the blood stains, but Odo will not let them pass. Someone is calling for the priests to be brought._

_The Hospitaller wants for cloth. I bring some to him, tearing up a cloak I had got only the year before. With it, he wraps the angel's arms, where they bend at the elbow. He touches her skin as if he touched the Grail._

_My lord holds her, and with one hand strokes her bloodied hair._

_She is near naked. The shift she wears does not cover her legs, and it is bloodied and torn. I find one of my master's cloaks, the better one, and I bring it. The Moor gives me a nod of his head as he takes it from me._

_There are more people in the hall, now, and Odo is hard-pressed. The Moor stands up to go and help him, but then, without any warning, a silence falls, all becomes quiet, and the door is opening._

_The king stands in the doorway._

_He has dressed in a suit of clothes borrowed from one of his knights. He is taller than I had thought him, not as tall as my lord but taller than my lord's son. He has brought his body servants, their swords drawn to hold back the mob._

_His eyes search the room, and they find her._

_The king kneels by my lord's side, his hands taking hers._

_How, he asks, and in his voice is a whisper of death._

_The priests, says the Hospitaller. They bled her too harshly, and now she is dying._

_I am looking at the king. I am looking into his face, and I see how it changes, how it darkens, how his eyes fill with rage and how he is wroth. I see how there is death written there._

_Pity the priest who put the knife to her flesh._

_The king holds out his arms._

_We are breathless. My lord does not move, and, for the most terrifying of moments, we are gripped by the fear that he will not give her up, that he will deny the king. I watch his back, watch the way his shoulders grow rigid, and I think that the king, who is known throughout the world for his kindness, will not forgive this._

_But then he raises his head, he lifts her up, and my lord gives the angel into the king's arms._

_And by the set of his head, by the way he lifts his head as if shaking off a blow, I know how much this cost him._

_She lives, says the Hospitaller. The fever is already diminishing. She lives, and will live, if her wounds are staunched and she is not bled again._

_No blade will touch her, says the king. Any man who raises an edge against her forfeits his life._

_He takes her up, he lifts her, and I see that he intends to take her away from here, perhaps to one of the royal residences. At the door, he stops, looks back._

_I do not know what the king was like before the miracle. A lowly squire does not often speak to the king of Jerusalem, be he leper or no._

_But this man now, this king standing here—_

_He looks at my lord. He looks at my lord, his gaze weighing, as if he is measuring my master against his honor._

_My lord seems not to notice. He stares at the floor, where he still kneels, his clothes and hands stained with blood._

_The angel groans, a moan of pain and fear._

_Attend me, Godfrey, says the king, his voice low. Attend to your king, and your future queen._

_We are struck dumb. My lord's son's mouth opens noiselessly, and the Hospitaller sucks in his breath. In the silence, I hear the body servants shouting in the hall, and Odo swearing bitterly._

_My lord sits, his head lowered, and then he bows._

_Yes, Your Majesty, he says, and stands up._

_His face, when we see it, is indecipherable._


End file.
